


chasing the sun

by Ciesste



Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Amnesia, Amnesiac Tony Stark, F/M, Identity Porn, M/M, References to Supernatural (TV), Road Trips, few people know Tony is Iron Man, the SPN AU no one asked for but that I wanted
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 14:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20780159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciesste/pseuds/Ciesste
Summary: On his way driving to Malibu to pay his respects for the missing, presumed dead Iron Man, Bucky Barnes picks up an amnesic man named Tony Stark who, strangely, seems familiar.





	chasing the sun

**Author's Note:**

> Please lmk if you’d like me to tag for anything else! 
> 
> This is chapter 1/5 (or 6, depending on how the rest of edits go, hahahaa). Also, RL has come to destroy my soul, so I’m going to try and edit at least 1ch/week for the rest of the chapters!
> 
> Comments/kudos are definitely welcome, but if you have critiques, please just be kind. It’s been about 72,000 years since I’ve posted anything. <3

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL ARTWORK BY [SCRIPTSERPENT](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scriptserpent)!!!!!!

THE MOMENT I SAW IT, I WAS LIKE, "I'VE GOTTA WRITE SOMETHING FOR THIS"

* * *

Bucky crossed his arms over the bike’s handles and sighed, staring at the setting sun until black spots dotted his vision. Reds, purples, and fading blues painted the horizon, challenged only by the warm glow coming from the nearby building.

But, for once, even the familiar lights of the Sword & Shield weren’t enough to relax him. Normally, arriving at the rustic, well-kept roadhouse was like coming home, but . . .

Bucky sighed again. Eight hours on the road with only unrelenting, weighty thoughts could drag stronger men than him under.

And the reason he was driving twelve hundred miles to Malibu was a heavy one, indeed.

Releasing the handles before he could accidentally rip them off—again—he climbed off his custom bike and stretched. Bones cracked, muscles creaked, and an ache radiated from his right shoulder as if _it_ was the one made of metal; it protested louder when he leaned over to retrieve his duffel before heading for the building.

Christ, but he just wanted to be done with this whole poorly planned idea. But, if he threw in the towel without putting in his best effort, his mother would find some way to return from the grave and give him grief over it.

The again, with so many enhanced running around nowadays, it was possible one of them might actually have the ability to talk with the dead.

Someone with that talent would’ve been able to tell whether or not Iron Man was—

Bucky’s heart seized and only his reflexes kept him from faceplanting mere feet from the entrance. His metal hand slammed against the wall, leaving a hand-shaped imprint in the wood.

Wincing, he ineffectively brushed it, hoped Carol would see it when she was in a good mood, pushed his way inside.

Noise blasted him as he passed the threshold, almost too much for him to parse. His breath shuddered out of him, ears picking up the sound of bottles clanking, music playing, and doors slamming out of sight.

From much too close, a voice shouted, “Cheater!” and a fist slammed into a table.

Bucky dropped his duffel, palmed a knife, and crouched, before surveying the room. 

On the other side of the room, a familiar shape splayed his hands on the table and stood, looming over the others sitting nearby. “There’s no way you’re not cheating,” Pietro said.

Next to him, Wanda cycled red threads around her fingers, eyes half lidded and expression bored. The truth of her attention was in her straightened back and the way she angled her chair toward her brother.

Across from them both, a brunette raised his hands in a placating gesture. A Royal Flush splayed on the table in front of him. Were it not for the near-visible intelligence in his eyes, Bucky would’ve believed cheating to be beyond him.

“I’m not cheating,” the stranger said. “I swear. Maybe I’m just lucky?” His words were deep and smooth, as if the whisky color of his eyes had melted into his voice.

Bucky swallowed when those expressive eyes darted to him and then away, feeling suddenly off-balance. Something about the brief glimpse of calculation in the stranger’s gaze seared through him, as if someone had punched him straight through the heart.

Pietro snarled. “You’ve won every game and you want me to believe you’re not cheating?”

“Not sure what you want from me, buddy.” The stranger’s gaze darted across Pietro’s body—chest, shoulder, then arm—before he ducked as Pietro swung at him.

Red threads lifted the table, launching the bottles, cards, and chips across the room, a maelstrom of chaos. In the midst, a bottle flung unerring accuracy into Pietro’s face.

Bucky’s mouth went dry as he tracked the trajectory of that thrown bottle back to the stranger, connected it to the man’s previously calculated gaze, and realized the accuracy of that throw.

A cocktail of anticipation bubbled in his chest; whether it was danger or curiosity churning, he couldn’t be sure. He cleared his throat and tightened his grip on his knife, unsure when he’d loosened it.

Pietro staggered back, rage twisting his expression into something inhuman; a sight that clearly didn’t go unnoticed by the brunette, whose eyes widened as he edged back toward a window behind him.

A gust of wind rushed through the air as Carol, clearly fed up with the altercation, rushed into Pietro’s space. The younger speedster jerked back, nearly slamming into Wanda, who was now standing and clearly gunning for a fight.

Gold light flickered around Carol as she crossed her arms and leveled a disappointed glare at the trio. “Enough,” she said, tone sharp enough to chip diamond. “Everyone, calm down.”

Pietro growled. Red wisped between Wanda’s fingers, her aggressive stance familiar after their years in Hydra’s hands. Tension stretched between them like a rubber band about to snap.

The stranger pointed at himself. “I’m calm. Look how calm I am. Has anyone every been calmer than I am right now—“

“Please stop talking, Tony.”

With Carol managing the situation, Bucky sheathed his knife and allowed himself to turn his focus from the twins and onto the stranger.

Tony. A simple name for a man who, with only a scant few moments of observation, seemed anything but. His presence—one that seemed too big to fit into four short letters—was almost . . . familiar, although Bucky had never met the other man before in his life.

Tony seemed like the kind of person who would be impossible to forget.

Carol raised an eyebrow. “Well? What’ll it be?”

Pietro bristled, looking like he was one wrong breath from eviscerating Tony, Carol’s glowing hands be damned.

“You’re not worth it, anyway.” With a huff, Pietro grabbed Wanda’s hand and dragged her away from the table, heading to the other side of the room. He slammed the back door open and stormed into the darkness.

As Pietro’s footsteps faded, Bucky dropped his glower. The other customers glanced at the swinging door, then returned to their own devices as if this was business as usual.

Bucky frowned. Sword & Shield customers tended to be rowdy, but Pietro’s and Wanda’s actions had edged uncomfortably close to violent.

His confusion must have been obvious, because Carol sighed and raked a hand through her short hair. “Everyone’s a little on edge, what with the Iron Man situation.”

Tension that had begun to trickle away returned with a vengeance. Bucky shifted, then forced himself still. “Can’t blame him, really.”

“Who’s Iron Man?” Tony asked, from suddenly much too close.

Bucky forced himself not to take a step back. “Are you serious?” He glanced at Carol. “Is he serious?”

In this day and age, someone who didn’t know Iron Man seemed . . . impossible.

Carol clapped Tony on the shoulder. “A hero,” Carol said, before turning to Bucky. “Tony has amnesia. Don’t give him too hard a time.”

“Guilty as charged,” Tony said with a full-body shrug.

Years of cataloguing the smallest of ticks proved Tony’s nonchalance to be little more than an act; he was terrified by the memory loss.

How relatable. “How’d you find this place?” Bucky asked, latching onto the potential distracted from his thoughts. It was either that or examining the thrum of empathy that started beating in time with his heart.

Tony smirked; it trembled at the edges. “Carol found me wandering in the wilderness and took me in, despite me having nothing to my name.” He spread his hands, as if to emphasize how much he _didn’t_ have. “I’ll pay her back. Eventually. Once I figure out who I am.”

Carol snorted. “You think saving a life comes cheap?”

“Well, clearly, I’m pretty good at cards, so that’s always an option.” He opened his mouth as if to continue speaking, then snapped it closed as his gaze alighted on Bucky’s left arm.

“There’s good with numbers and then there’s doing whatever it is you’re doing. If you keep cleaning out my regulars, I’ll have to ban you from the tables.”

Bucky raised an eyebrow and gave Tony another once-over, shifting so his arm was out of Tony’s direct line of sight. There was intelligent, and then there was whatever Tony was doing. “You enhanced?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Tony scratched his goatee, moved two feet to the side, and resumed staring at Bucky’s arm.

Bucky grimaced and resisted the urge to shift away from Tony’s scrutiny a second time. Iron Man had made the prothesis for him, which was one of the only reasons he’d managed to regain some of his life back.

The arm had brought him closer to “normal” than he’d managed in the ten years previous, even if Bucky’s “normal” wasn’t as revenge-filled as Steve likely would’ve wanted—apparently only going on a few raids against ex-Hydra bases a year wasn’t enough for Steve Grant Rogers, he who refused to stop moving lest his demons catch up.

Unfortunately, not all problems could be punched into submission, a lesson Steve was proving particularly resistant to learning.

Bronzed fingers, scarred by burns and scars, snapped in his face.

He had the offending wrist in his grip, with its hummingbird fast pulse beneath the skin, within half a heartbeat.

Tony blinked, long eyelashes dusting his cheekbones as he ignored Bucky’s bruising hold and leaned in to examine the metal arm. His breath ghosted against the metal plating, tingling the facsimile of nerve-endings that had been programmed into the device. “What’s this made out of?” He knocked against it with a knuckle, looking delighted when the plate released an echoing chime instead of a hollow thud, one more common to non-vibranium metals.

Iron Man had done an unimaginably fantastic job, so much so that some mornings, when Bucky was still in that dreamy state between being awake and being asleep, he forgot that the feeling of heat-drenched bedding and threadbare sweats weren’t being filtered through flesh and blood.

Iron Man had been a genius and now . . .

Bucky released Tony’s wrist and exhaled. It wavered in the air and roughened his next words, until they sounded as if they’d been scraped clear from his throat. “I’m not a huge fan of the touching.”

“Oh, sorry!” Tony’s gaze flew from the metal to lock with Bucky’s as he raised his hands in a gesture of innocence. “Boundaries. Got it.”

“Don’t worry, Tony. Bucky’s a softie underneath all that doom and gloom.” She ruffled Tony’s hair, laughed when he squawked, then reached out, lightning fast, to tug at a trailing strand of Bucky’s fringe.

He glared, then rolled his eyes, knowing there was little that would faze Carol.

The oldest of all of them by a large margin—although no one seemed to know by _how_ much—trying to get a read on Carol was like trying to analyze a rock: impossible and a waste of time.

“Anyway,” Carol began, “It’s lucky you came when you did, Bucky. You should take Tony with you to Malibu.” Before Tony could ask the obvious follow-up question, Carol continued. “If you’ve ever made contact with an enhanced, they’re all gathering there right now. Someone might recognize you.”

Tony’s intelligent gaze moved between the pair. Whatever sorrow he must’ve seen on their faces seemed to stall whatever he’d been thinking of asking. His expression crumpled into stricken lines, making him look impossibly old. “Oh,” he said, quietly.

It was obvious he wanted an explanation. Christ, he probably was owed one. It shouldn’t have been too hard to explain even a little bit, but the desire to even try shriveled as his left arm suddenly felt improbably heavy.

As if they’d been waiting for a break in his emotional defenses, the weight from the long drive and Bucky’s stemmed thoughts returned with a vengeance.

There was a time and place for this conversation, and Bucky wanted to around for no part of it.

Bucky jerked a hand over his shoulder in the direction of the building’s lodgings. “Got anything open for me right now?” If she didn’t, well. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d camped outside.

Carol glared, as if she could read his mind. “You’re not sleeping outside, mister. I don’t have time to deal with a cranky Steve Rogers.”

Bucky huffed a laugh. “Does anyone?” He was just so tired. “Which room?”

Almost faster than his eyes could track, she darted to the counter, snagged a key, and returned it. “Room 36.”

Bucky pocketed the ke, glanced to and from the bevy of questions alight in Tony’s eyes, and sidled past the pair. “Nice meeting you, Tony.”

The weight of wide, brown eyes followed him all the way through the room, only disappearing when he rounded the corner toward the rooms. At the edge of his hearing, Tony asked, “Did I do something wrong, Carol?”

He tuned out Carol’s response.

Ignoring as much of the truth as possible was the only thing he could do.

He trudged into the room and mechanically got ready for bed. The servos in his arm whined and hissed as he moved, a now familiar soundtrack to his life.

Yet another way he would never be able to forget about Iron Man and how he’d protected the world from malicious enhanced individuals long before anyone else had thought to stand by him.

How the man had fought for the rights of enhanced individuals, navigating seamlessly through legalese that would’ve seen them treated more like animals than people.

How he’d led the charge against Hydra when it had shown its multi-faceted head for the first time in decades, burnished in bright gold and red like a bright constellation that was determined to change the world through sheer presence alone.

Had Iron Man been alone when he—

A hurried splash of water against his face and was all that kept Bucky from snapping the porcelain and owing Carol even _more_ in damages.

His interest in Iron Man—an obsession, according to Steve—had existed long before Bucky had gotten himself stupidly captured and damn-near brainwashed by Hydra, and it’d been the small flame of his regard toward the armored hero that had kept him sane until he could be rescued.

With Steve’s help, Iron Man had saved him and, despite not knowing the identity of the man who piloted the armor, Bucky had vowed to pay him back.

But he’d lost his chance.

Because Iron Man was dead.


End file.
